The Schooling of Claybird Catts

by Janis Owens

  Now, I’ve never turned down an opportunity to ride in the back of a pickup if I can help it, and left easily enough, needing a little fresh air to clear my head of the fumes of Daddy’s hideous revelation. We didn’t go far, just up to the Jiffy, though by the time I got back to Grannie’s, I had a feeling Daddy hadn’t been too discreet about the details of our little talk, for I could detect a snickering at my back wherever I went, especially among the men on the porch.

  Even Grannie looked suspiciously amused whenever our paths crossed, though she was at some pains to hide it, and even let me lick the bowls when she was done mixing her famous peach custard. By the time it was all packed in rock salt and rattling around the churn, the evening that had begun so ominously ended up nothing more than a routine family gathering, the men all congregated on the back porch, the women in the living room, where my shameless cousin was perched in the middle of the room on Grannie’s old ottoman, going on and on about her wedding, and moreover, her magnificent honeymoon.

  “Curtis wants to go to Gatlinburg, but I want a go to New Orleans. Remember, Aint Myra, when we stopped there on the way to your cousin’s? It was so romantic, with all the verandas.”

  “I remember more drag queens than verandas,” Mama countered, as she was trying, without much success, to steer Lori into spending her wedding money in a more practical vein.

  But Lori was having none of it, just went on and on about the French Quarter and how romantic it was till I’d finally had about enough of her and her shameless ways and told her plainly, “Well, why don’t yawl just save your money and run down to the drive-in. Sounds like you been having pretty good luck down there already.”

  For a blink of a moment, I thought I had actually achieved the miraculous and caused Lori a flicker of remorse, her face losing its excitement as Curtis’s sisters allowed themselves a snicker or two that I appreciated as the room had suddenly become so quiet. I didn’t know why and was just sitting there, still a little steamed, till I realized that Mama was slowly coming to her feet, her eyes on me, and I’ll tell you what: I’ve only gotten about three whippings in my life and saw every one of them coming.

  I mean, Mama is not the kind of mother who does much threatening or much whipping, either, for that matter, though she does draw a clear line on one point: intentional cruelty, which she had somehow misinterpreted my innocent little jibe to be.

  “But Mama! Mama!” I cried immediately. “I didn’t mean it! I will be good!”

  This last was an actual wail as she yanked me up and dragged me to the porch, ripped a switch off the closest crepe myrtle, and let me have it, leaves and all. I was hopping around, yelping like a dog, my situation not made any easier by the fact that Sim and Missy had climbed on the cedar chest in the bedroom for ringside seats, with Mama giving them their money’s worth, all right, chewing me out the whole time she switched in this furious little voice: “—doan you ever let me heah you talk thet way agin—” Which is the way Mama sounds when she’s good and mad, lapsing into this awful swamp-running, hillbilly brogue that was kind of hard to understand, not that I was listening.

  I was too busy trying to get clear of her, though it didn’t last long, it never did. When it was over, she just stood there and continued her lecture with a furious shake of the switch: “—doan you think thet chile’ll have a hard enough time without your little smart-ass remarks?”

  I didn’t venture a reply, just collapsed on the porch steps, my head in my hands, about crapped out by then: no trip to Eufaula, no Holiday Inn. No illusions left about the nature of true love. Nothing. All gone in one sorry afternoon, and whipped on top of that, and Mama cussing, which always made me feel kind of weenie, anyway.

  I just sat there, my head in my hands, and would have cried except that I had cried myself out when I was trying to talk Daddy out of postponing our fishing trip. There was nothing left now but black despair, Mama’s breath still kind of fast and labored, though after a moment, she asked in a small voice, “You all right?”

  Well, no, I by gosh wasn’t. I was forever changed and just sat there on the step till Daddy came around and tried to rouse me, with little result. Even after all the relations cleared out and I apologized (under the threat of another whipping) to Lori, and Grannie gave me a bowl of peach ice cream to take home, even then I couldn’t shake the horror of the day, going straight to bed when I got home and staring at the underside of my top bunk, drowning in a sea of despair. I was thinking what a relatively simple life Kenneth had, with two brothers and a mother who worked all the time. I was wishing I was him when the door opened and Mama came in and stood by my bed, still in her town clothes, though she was barefoot.

  “Claybird?” she asked quietly. “Are you all right? I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

  There was an old Mama-concern in her voice that I steeled myself against, for I was the one who’d been humiliated; dragged out of a roomful of women and publicly whipped. My reply was a cold silence, though Mama wasn’t so easily rebuffed, just felt around in the darkness till she found my hand.

  “Baby, you just cain’t treat people that way,” she told me in a quiet little voice. “You have to be careful about your words. Words can hurt. I know you’re disappointed about your trip, but you hurt Lori tonight and she’s needing our support, not our—smart remarks.”

  I didn’t argue, but just lay there, trying to be the Big Man, though a few traitor tears began to seep out and roll down the sides of my face.

  “But he promised,” I finally managed, as that was the heart of the matter: that who cared what kind of mess Lori and Curtis had gotten themselves into? Daddy promised.

  “Well, I know he did,” Mama agreed, for she hated Daddy’s busy schedule, was always harassing him about it. “And I know it ain’t fair,” she allowed, which was a comfort, that someone was finally on my side.

  “I’ll tell you what,” she began, and I braced myself for another wonderful option, like going to Uncle Case’s with a stranger, but Mama can be the soul of comfort when she wants to be and really hit upon a worthy substitution: “When the wedding’s over, we’ll all go to the beach afterward. We can rent a condo, take everyone, Uncle Ed and Aunt Candace. The Miracle Strip’ll be open, we can buy a family pass. It’ll do Candace good to get away a few nights. This hasn’t been easy for her, either, you know.”

  Now, I cared not at all for Aunt Candace and her worries, but was immediately intrigued by the part about the Miracle Strip—a little amusement park on Front Street that was just the funnest place in the world before it got too hot in June. Spring was the perfect time to go, and after a moment, I asked in a weenie little voice, “Can Kenneth go?”

  “Sure,” Mama said easily. “I’ll call Susan tonight.”

  “And Daddy’ll be there? All weekend?”

  “All weekend,” she said with another little squeeze to my hand. “We’ll get Lori and Curtis down the aisle and run ’em through the rice, be there in time for supper. We’ll all eat at Captain Anderson’s, go out on the boat.”

  This was sounding better by the minute; I could feel a corresponding loosening in my chest, and a wash of happy relief, thinking how flipped out Kenneth would be when he heard about Captain Anderson’s, because he was too stinking poor to eat at McDonald’s, much less a big old ship.

  Once Mama saw that she had me hooked, she kissed the back of my hand. “Go to sleep, Big Man,” she said. “We’ve got a big week ahead of us. Lori’s shower, then Missy leaves on her trip. You’ll have to help me.”

  Right on the tail end of my wash of happy relief came a corresponding rise of guilt, and just as she made the door, I sat up and offered in this weenie little voice, “I’m sorry I was mean to Lori. Tell Daddy.”

  Mama just paused in the doorway, smiled. “I already have. Sleep tight. Don’t let the bed bugs bite.” Which is what she and Grannie always used to say when we were little: Don’t let the bed bugs bite.

  As predicted, the next week did fly by, first the bridal shower,
then we had to take Missy to the airport in Tallahassee, then we had to get the house fixed up for the wedding. For five straight days, me and Mama and Kenneth worked like dogs, stuffing crabs and stringing lights and picking up cakes and tuxes and florist flowers, even having to transplant two little magnolias that were in the way of the outdoor altar, that Mama didn’t want to lose.

  We were about pooped out by the day of the wedding, though Mama was as good as her word about the weekend in Panama City, except in one small respect: Daddy didn’t get down there on Friday night as promised, neither did she. They didn’t come till the next day, for Daddy had been struck down after the wedding by a particularly nauseating stomachache that he originally thought was food poisoning. He was afraid Mama had gotten ahold of some bad oysters, but it passed quickly, both of them showing up bright and early the next morning, so that we were able to do all the things she’d promised: the Miracle Strip and the roller coaster and the swings and the log ride. We even rented a pontoon boat on Sunday and went snorkeling off Shell Island, saw some dolphins and jumped right in with them, though Mama wouldn’t let us touch them, said they looked too much like sharks. All in all it turned out to be just the funnest weekend of my life, with only one unexpected twist, courtesy of my sister, who had managed to squeeze in a weeklong trip to Paris while the rest of us were working like dogs, returning from France the night before the wedding with tidings of something even more exotic than smoked eel or edible snails: news of Uncle Gabe.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  She’d met him at an airport in New York while she was waiting for her plane, a visit of less than an hour, I later learned, though to hear her talk, you’d have thought that she’d never left his side the whole week she was gone. I mean, she would just not shut up about him; all weekend long, it was Gabe-this-and-Gabe-that-and-Gabe-killed-the-yeller-cat (rhyme of my Grannie’s). I personally couldn’t see what all the fuss was about, though Daddy seemed spellbound by every detail, asked her how he looked, where he lived.

  “Well, I don’t know about thet,” Missy said. “I just called him from the airport when the plane was late, just like you said, and he came right over, still wearing his pajama top, and I said, ‘Gosh, Uncle Gabe, I said the plane was late, not on fire—’”

  “Is he still teaching?” Daddy pressed, though Missy just shrugged.

  “Don’t know thet, either. Didn’t ask. I guess he is. Mostly we just talked about us. I showed him all the pictures in my wallet and give him one—you know, the Olan Mills one where Mama has big hair—and he was nice about it, said we all looked good. I wanted him to come down for the wedding, but he wouldn’t, I don’t know why. I mean, it’s not like we live on another planet or something. Why don’t you call him, Daddy? I know he’d come if you called.”

  Now, I wish I could remember Daddy’s reply to all her nagging, but I had bigger fish to fry that weekend and didn’t much care that Missy had inexplicably fallen in love with her own uncle, though I did tell her to quit going on and on about him, that it was embarrassing.

  “You’re just jealous,” she snapped. “You hate it when I know people you don’t. You’re still mad about that stupid fishing trip.”

  I told her to hush, didn’t think much about it, for Missy is the kind of person who always has to be in the superior position, which in fact, she usually is: president of Beta Club, champion debater, star of the girls’ softball team. I figured that meeting the Genius Uncle was just another feather in her cap, though even Sim seemed kind of fascinated by his appearance, listening to Missy’s unending recital with considerable interest, even offering his own contribution: how Uncle Gabe had stayed with us one summer; had taught him to swan dive.

  “When?” Missy asked, outraged that Sim had one-upped her. “Where was I?”

  Sim thought back. “You couldn’t have been more than two or three. Remember? He was writing a book, lived upstairs in the old apartment.”

  “All that junk is his?” Missy asked in amazement, meaning the ratty old maps that were pinned around the walls of the apartment, and had been, as long as I could remember.

  “Sure,” Sim said with great confidence, suddenly the expert. “That’s all his stuff. He used to work on it in the morning and swim with us in the afternoon—remember?”

  “How old was I?” I interrupted to ask, though Sim seemed kind of taken back by the question, just blinked at me a moment, then looked away.

  “I don’t know,” he answered vaguely. “It was a long time ago. Before you were born.”

  He said no more about it, though sometime that weekend—it must have been the drive home, when it was just me and him and Kenneth—he brought up Gabe once again, asked me if I’d ever thought about meeting him. That wasn’t I curious?

  “No,” I told him plainly, “and I don’t get why you and Missy are so, like, obsessed with him. He don’t care about us. He don’t even come see Grannie.”

  Simon just lifted his face at that, offered mysteriously: “Well, maybe he cain’t. Maybe Grannie won’t let him.”

  I simply couldn’t believe this; couldn’t imagine anyone so low that Grannie wouldn’t welcome them home. Why, even Uncle Ira found protection under her maternal wing. He and Mama had lived across the fence from her when they were children, and to this day, no one could mention Uncle Ira being in The Joint without Grannie snorting and saying, “Well, there’s two sides to every hoecake, even if one of them’s burnt,” meaning that there was two sides to every story, and maybe Uncle Ira’s side hadn’t been told.

  So I couldn’t imagine her cutting off her own son, and the next Sunday after dinner when everyone else had left and she and I were alone, I broached the subject of Uncle Gabe, asked why he never came home. I was standing in the kitchen when I asked it, helping her do the dishes like I always did, her washing and me standing on a footstool rinsing. She didn’t answer right away, just stared out the window at her backyard that was in full bloom that time of year, full of giant azaleas and hydrangeas and six or seven camellias. They weren’t planted like Mama’s in a careful design, but just stuck in the ground any old way, Grannie’s eyes on them when she answered: “Oh, baby—Gabe—he’s a long way from home. Way up north.”

  Which sounded like the very definition of sorry to me: a man who raced off north first chance he got, made it big, and forgot where he came from. It made me feel very sorry for my poor old grannie, standing there doing dishes in her rickety old kitchen, though when I asked her if it was true that she wouldn’t let him come home, her face lost its wistfulness in a instant.

  “Who told you thet?” she snapped.

  When I told her Sim, she made a little noise of annoyance in her throat, the feminine counterpart to one of Daddy’s grunts. “Well, Sim is just wrong, is all. My childrun are free to come and go as they please. Gabe,” she began, then paused again and sighed, “he knows where I live.”

  But her eyes were back on her azaleas when she said it, thoughtful and sad, her usual confidence cut by a note of regret so palpable that I backed off quickly and changed the subject, though that wasn’t the end of it. For Grannie has never been one to politely overlook an offense and must have straightened Sim out the first chance she got—probably in the parking lot that night after church, because he came straight home in a rush of ill temper and cornered me in the kitchen like a wild dog.

  “You are just such a blabbermouth,” he said to my face in this furious little whisper. “I cain’t believe you told Grannie about Uncle Gabe. Now she’s all mad and it’s all your fault—shhhh!” he hissed as Mama came to the door. “Don’t you say a word or I’m telling Daddy!”

  “You can tell anybody you want to,” I informed him stoutly, for I’m actually less afraid of Sim than Missy, as Sim isn’t a fighter. I mean, if you push him too far, he’ll get in your face and holler like a crazy man, eyes bulging and spit flying, but unlike Missy, he’ll never take a swing.

  So I didn’t see any reason to mince words and told him plainly: “I don’t even know
what you’re talking about.”

  “—about what?” Mama asked, as she had heard the commotion and come in on the tail end of it.

  Sim straightened up when he saw her, said, “Nothing,” very quickly, and would have ended it at that.

  But I didn’t much like being cornered and spit at, and wasn’t letting go so easy. “He came in here yelling and spitting in my face ’cause Grannie’s mad at him.”

  Mama looked surprised, as Grannie has never been known to have a cross word with any of us, but is our protector and shield, the cooker of cakes and the churner of ice cream. She’s the kind of grannie who slips you gum in church and affixes your coloring projects to her refrigerator and never a word of criticism does she voice, even when you’re caught flat-footed, hand in the cookie jar.

  So she was rightly concerned to hear that Sim had offended her, asked, “Well, Sim? What in the world’s wrong with you and Cissie?”

  Sim looked truly murderous by then, for he’s the kind of person who’d rather have his arm amputated than admit he was wrong. “Nothing,” he repeated, and would have backed off, if Mama hadn’t folded her arms and leaned against the counter like she was preparing for a long siege.

  “Simon,” she repeated levelly. “I think you heard me.”

  He rolled his eyes at that, then exhaled this huge breath and told her, very quickly: “It’s just something stupid Clay told her I said about Uncle Gabe. Grannie just misunderstood and Clay’s got to go running his mouth to her about every stinking thing like he was three stinking years old.”

  Now, is it my imagination or do I remember Mama looking a little stunned at the mention of Gabe’s name? Do I remember a flicker of concern, a fast cut of her eyes to me? It’s hard to say, for I really wasn’t paying her much attention, was too thrilled that I’d caught the Perfect One in a lie, rebounding in an instant, shouting, “Did not! Liar!”